Three of the five commercial establishments inspected yesterday in Beira by the Tax Authority of Mozambique (AT) were fined for failing to issue invoices on the sale of products, a situation the AT classifies as tax evasion.

The inspection was based on the audit of books listing goods sold to customers, which found that sales had not been invoiced for a long time and, in some cases, value added tax [VAT] had not been charged.

The assessment, part of a nation-wide campaign initiated yesterday, could entail fines of between 5,000 and 70,000 meticais.

One owner of a fined establishment, which included a fuel pump, said they did not issue invoices because, in practice, sales were almost non-existent.

“In the last few days, we are not selling. So we’re not billing. When it is not sold, the bill cannot be passed on,” Yagnesh Patel, owner of Africa Incorporated, a commercial store selling granite, mosaics and marble, said.

The AT’s Sofala delegate, Raimundo Mapanzene, says tax evasion by lack of billing in commercial transactions is a matter of great concern.

“The campaign is intended to verify whether or not businesses are contributing to state revenues. We expect by the end of the campaign in December to have instilled a culture of issuing invoices for all business transactions. We want a business environment in which the state gets what it is entitled to,” he said.

Since January, Sofala has collected, ten billion of the 15 billion meticais of revenues foreseen for this year. Failure to issue invoices prevents proper state oversight of tax collection.

“We have to be fiscally more proactive as citizens to give the state the financial strength to guarantee basic conditions for the population,” Mapanzene said.